The Great Taboo

ENROLLED in OLYMPUS.

They rowed across the lagoon, a mysterious procession, almost in silence—­the canoe with the two Europeans going first, the others following at a slight distance—­and landed at last on the brink of the central island.

Several of the Boupari people leaped ashore at once; then they helped Felix and Muriel from the frail bark with almost deferential care, and led the way before them up a steep white path, that zigzagged through the forest toward the centre of the island.  As they went, a band of natives preceded them in regular line of march, shouting “Taboo, taboo!” at short intervals, especially as they neared any group of fan-palm cottages.  The women whom they met fell on their knees at once, till the strange procession had passed them by; the men only bowed their heads thrice, and made a rapid movement on their breasts with their fingers, which reminded Muriel at once of the sign of the cross in Catholic countries.

So on they wended their way in silence through the deep tropical jungle, along a pathway just wide enough for three to walk abreast, till they emerged suddenly upon a large cleared space, in whose midst grew a great banyan-tree, with arms that dropped and rooted themselves like buttresses in the soil beneath.  Under the banyan-tree a raised platform stood upon posts of bamboo.  The platform was covered with fine network in yellow and red; and two little stools occupied the middle, as if placed there on purpose and waiting for their occupants.

The man who had headed the first canoe turned round to Felix and motioned him forward.  “This is Heaven,” he said glibly, in his own tongue.  “Spirits, ascend it!”

Felix, much wondering what the ceremony could mean, mounted the platform without a word, in obedience to the chief’s command, closely followed by Muriel, who dared not leave him for a second.

“Bring water!” the chief said, shortly, in a voice of authority to one of his followers.

The man handed up a calabash with a little water in it.  The chief took the rude vessel from his hands in a reverential manner, and poured a few drops of the contents on Felix’s head; the water trickled down over his hair and forehead.  Involuntarily, Felix shook his head a little at the unexpected wetting, and scattered the drops right and left on his neck and shoulders.  The chief watched this performance attentively with profound satisfaction.  Then he turned to his attendants.

“The spirit shakes his head,” he said, with a deeply convinced air.  “All is well.  Heaven has chosen him.  Korong!  Korong!  He is accepted for his purpose.  It is well!  It is well!  Let us try the other one.”

He raised the calabash once more, and poured a few drops in like manner on Muriel’s dark hair.  The poor girl, trembling in every limb, shook her head also in the same unintentional fashion.  The chief regarded her with still more complacent eyes.

“It is well,” he observed once more to his companions, smiling.  “She, too, gives the sign of acceptance.  Korong!  Korong!  Heaven is well pleased with both.  See how her body trembles!”

At that moment a girl came forward with a little basket of fruits.  The chief chose a banana with care from the basket, peeled it with his dusky hands, broke it slowly in two, and handed one half very solemnly to Felix.

“Eat, King of the Rain,” he said, as he presented it.  “The offering of Heaven.”

Felix ate it at once, thinking it best under the circumstances not to demur at all to anything his strange hosts might choose to impose upon him.

The chief handed the other half just as solemnly to Muriel.  “Eat, Queen of the Clouds,” he said, as he placed it in her fingers.  “The offering of Heaven.”

Muriel hesitated.  She didn’t know what his words meant, and it seemed to her rather the offering of a very dirty and unwashed savage.  The chief eyed her hard.  “For God’s sake eat it, my child; he tells you to eat it!” Felix exclaimed in haste.  Muriel lifted it to her lips and swallowed it down with difficulty.  The man’s dusky hands didn’t inspire confidence.

But the chief seemed relieved when he had seen her swallow it.  “All is well done,” he said, turning again to his followers.  “We have obeyed the words of Tu-Kila-Kila, and his orders that he gave us.  We have offered the strangers, the spirits from the sun, as a free gift to Heaven, and Heaven has accepted them.  We have given them fruits, the fruits of the earth, and they have duly eaten them.  Korong!  Korong!  The King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds have indeed come among us.  They are truly gods.  We will take them now, as he bid us, to Tu-Kila-Kila.”

“What have they done to us?” Muriel asked aside, in a terrified undertone of Felix.

“I can’t quite make out,” Felix answered in the selfsame voice.  “They call us the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds in their own language.  I think they imagine we’ve come from the sun and that we’re a sort of spirits.”

At the sound of these words the girl who held the basket of fruits gave a sudden start.  It almost seemed to Muriel as if she understood them.  But when Muriel looked again she gave no further sign.  She merely held her peace, and tried to appear wholly undisconcerted.

The chief beckoned them down from the platform with a wave of his hand.  They rose and followed him.  As they rose the people around them bowed low to the ground.  Felix could see they were bowing to Muriel and himself, not merely to the chief.  A doubt flitted strangely across his mind for a moment.  What could it all mean?  Did they take the two strangers, then, for supernatural beings?  Had they enrolled them as gods?  If so, it might serve as some little protection for them.

The procession formed again, three and three, three and three, in solemn silence.  Then the chief walked in front of them with measured steps, and Felix and Muriel followed behind, wondering.  As they went, the cry rose louder and louder than before, “Taboo!  Taboo!” People who met them fell on their faces at once, as the chief cried out in a loud tone, “The King of the Rain!  The Queen of the Clouds!  Korong!  Korong!  They are coming!  They are coming!”

At last they reached a second cleared space, standing in a large garden of manilla, loquat, poncians, and hibiscus-trees.  It was entered by a gate, a tall gate of bamboo posts.  At the gate all the followers fell back to right and left, awe-struck.  Only the chief went calmly on.  He beckoned to Felix and Muriel to follow him.

They entered, half terrified.  Felix still grasped his open knife in his hand, ready to strike at any moment that might be necessary.  The chief led them forward toward a very large tree near the centre of the garden.  At the foot of the tree stood a hut, somewhat bigger and better built than any they had yet seen; and in front of the trunk a stalwart savage, very powerfully built, but with a sinister look in his cruel and lustful eye, was pacing up and down, like a sentinel on guard, a long spear in his right hand, and a tomahawk in his left, held close by his side, all ready for action.  As he prowled up and down he seemed to be peering warily about him on every side, as if each instant he expected to be set upon by an enemy.  But as the chief approached, the people without set up once more the cry of “Taboo!  Taboo!” and the stalwart savage by the tree, laying down his spear and letting his tomahawk fall free, dropped in a second the air of watchful alarm, and advanced with some courtesy to greet the new-comers.

“We have found them, Tu-Kila-Kila,” the chief said, presenting them to the god with a graceful wave of his hand.  “We have found the spirits that you brought from the sun, with the fire in their hands, and the light in boxes.  We have taken them to Heaven.  Heaven has accepted them.  We have offered them fruit, and they have eaten the banana.  The King of the Rain—­the Queen of the Clouds!  Korong!  Receive them!”

Tu-Kila-Kila glanced at them with an approving glance, strangely compounded of pleasure and terror.  “They are plump,” he said shortly.  “They are indeed Korong.  My sun has sent me an acceptable present.”

“What is your will that we should do with them?” the chief asked in a deeply deferential tone.

Tu-Kila-Kila looked hard at Muriel—­such a hateful look that the knife trembled irresolute for a second in Felix’s hand.  “Give them two fresh huts,” he said, in a lordly way.  “Give them divine platters.  Give them all that they need.  Make everything right for them.”

The chief bowed, and retired with an awed air from the presence.  Exactly as he passed a certain line on the ground, marked white with a row of coral-sand, Tu-Kila-Kila seized his spear and his tomahawk once more, and mounted guard, as before, at the foot of the great tree where they had seen him pacing.  An instantaneous change seemed to Muriel to come over his demeanor at that moment.  While he spoke with the chief she noticed he looked all cruelty, lust, and hateful self-indulgence.  Now that he paced up and down warily in front of that sacred floor, peering around him with keen suspicion, he seemed rather the personification of watchfulness, fear, and a certain slavish bodily terror.  Especially, she observed, he cast upon Felix, as he went, a glance of angry hate; and yet he did not attempt to hurt or molest him in any way, defenceless as they both were before those numerous savages.

As they emerged from the enclosure, the girl with the fruit basket stood near the gate, looking outward from the wall, her face turned away from the awful home of Tu-Kila-Kila.  At the moment when Muriel passed, to her immense astonishment the girl spoke to her.  “Don’t be afraid, missy,” she said in English, in a rather low voice, without obtrusively approaching them.  “Boupari man not going to hurt you.  Me going to be your servant.  Me name Mali.  Me very good girl.  Me take plenty care of you.”

The unexpected sound of her own language, in the midst of so much unmitigated savagery, took Muriel fairly by surprise.  She looked hard at the girl, but thought it wisest to answer nothing.  This particular young woman, indeed, was just as dark, and to all appearance just as much of a savage, as any of the rest of them.  But she could speak English, at any rate!  And she said she was to be Muriel’s servant!

The chief led them back to the shore, talking volubly all the way in Polynesia to Felix.  His dialect differed so much from the Fijian that when he spoke first Felix could hardly follow him.  But he gathered vaguely, nevertheless, that they were to be well housed and fed for the present at the public expense; and even that something which the chief clearly regarded as a very great honor was in store for them in the future.  Whatever these people’s particular superstition might be, it seemed pretty evident at least that it told in the strangers’ favor.  Felix almost began to hope they might manage to live there pretty tolerably for the next two or three weeks, and perhaps to signal in time to some passing Australian liner.

The rest of that wonderful eventful day was wholly occupied with practical details.  Before long, two adjacent huts were found for them, near the shore of the lagoon; and Felix noticed with pleasure, not only that the huts themselves were new and clean, but also that the chief took great care to place round both of them a single circular line of white coral-sand, like the one he had noticed at Tu-Kila-Kila’s palace-temple.  He felt sure this white line made the space within taboo.  No native would dare without leave to cross it.

When the line was well marked out round the two huts together, the chief went away for a while, leaving the Europeans within their broad white circle, guarded by an angry-looking band of natives with long spears at rest, all pointed inward.  The natives themselves stood well without the ring, but the points of their spears almost reached the line, and it was clear they would not for the present permit the Europeans to leave the charmed circle.

Presently, the chief returned again, followed by two other natives in official costumes.  One of them was a tall and handsome young man, dressed in a long robe or cloak of yellow feathers.  The other was stouter, and perhaps forty or thereabouts; he wore a short cape of white albatross plumes, with a girdle of shells at his waist, interspersed with red coral.

“The King of Fire will make Taboo,” the chief said, solemnly.

The young man with the cloak of yellow feathers stepped forward and spoke, toeing the line with his left foot, and brandishing a lighted stick in his right hand.  “Taboo!  Taboo!  Taboo!” he cried aloud, with emphasis.  “If any man dare to transgress this line without leave, I burn him to ashes.  If any woman, I scorch her to a cinder.  Taboo to the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds.  Taboo!  Taboo!  Taboo!  Korong!  I say it.”

He stepped back into the ranks with an air of duty performed.  The chief looked about him curiously a moment.  “The King of Water will make Taboo,” he repeated after a pause, in the same deep tone of profound conviction.

The stouter man in the short white cape stepped forward in his turn.  He toed the line with his naked left foot; in his brown right hand he carried a calabash of water.  “Taboo!  Taboo!  Taboo!” he exclaimed aloud, pouring out the water upon the ground symbolically.  “If any man dare to transgress this line without leave, I drown him in his canoe.  If any woman, I drag her alive into the spring as she fetches water.  Taboo to the King of the Rain and the Queen of the Clouds.  Taboo!  Taboo!  Taboo!  Korong!  I say it.”

“What does it all mean?” Muriel whispered, terrified.

Felix explained to her, as far as he could, in a few hurried sentences.  “There’s only one word in it I don’t understand,” he added, hastily, “and that’s Korong.  It doesn’t occur in Fiji.  They keep saying we’re Korong, whatever that may mean; and evidently they attach some very great importance to it.”

“Let the Shadows come forward,” the chief said, looking up with an air of dignity.

A good-looking young man, and the girl who said her name was Mali, stepped forth from the crowd, and fell on their knees before him.

The chief laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder and raised him up.  “The Shadow of the King of the Rain,” he cried, turning him three times round.  “Follow him in all his incomings and his outgoings, and serve him faithfully!  Taboo!  Taboo!  Pass within the sacred circle!”

He clapped his hands.  The young man crossed the line with a sort of reverent reluctance, and took his place within the ring, close up to Felix.

The chief laid his hand on Mali’s shoulder.  “The Shadow of the Queen of the Clouds,” he said, turning her three times round.  “Follow her in all her incomings and outgoings, and serve her faithfully.  Taboo!  Taboo!  Pass within the sacred circle!”

Then he waved both hands to Felix.  “Go where you will now,” he said.  “Your Shadow will follow you.  You are free as the rain that drops where it will.  You are as free as the clouds that roam through heaven.  No man will hinder you.”

And in a moment the spearmen dropped their spears in concert, the crowd fell back, and the villagers dispersed as if by magic, to their own houses.

But Felix and Muriel were left alone beside their huts, guarded only in silence by their two mystic Shadows.